Has any
other great director seemed as content to make merely good movies as Ridley
Scott? Visionary at his best, workmanlike at his worst, Scott has a bad habit
of making films whose handsomeness almost, but doesn't quite, hide their
shortcomings. Like last year's American Gangster, Body Of Lies has elements of greatness in it but
never quite performs the alchemy needed to convert them, settling instead for
mere goodness. Still, it's not like the screens are so flooded with decent
movies that we couldn't use another, particularly a timely, clear-eyed thriller
about the Middle East and the role of the U.S. therein.
Screenwriter
William Monahan (The Departed) adapts a novel by journalist/novelist David Ignatius and
the results play like a more comprehensible and explosion-filled Syriana. Body Of Lies opens with a terrorist incident in
Manchester, shifts to Iraq, then expands to reveal a web of decisions and
deceptions stretching from Baghdad to Langley, home base of a blunt, decisive
senior C.I.A. agent played by a porked-out Russell Crowe. From afar, Crowe puts
field agent Leonardo DiCaprio through his paces, making snap life-and-death
decisions informed more by general foreign policy goals than the immediate
situation. In DiCaprio he has an effective tool to sculpt the world, however
bluntly. An early scene in which DiCaprio kills an informant rather than let
him be captured illustrates his ability to make pitiless decisions, but that
talent doesn't always keep his overactive conscience at bay. A transfer to Jordan,
following the trail of terrorist mastermind Alon Abutbul, creates new
complications as DiCaprio enters into an information-sharing partnership with
Jordanian intelligence head Mark Strong and a friendship with a relocated
Iranian nurse (popular Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, whose participation
in the project has led to her being forbidden from leaving the country.) He
finds both relationships increasingly informed by undercurrents of mistrust as
the violence and intrigue mounts around him.
Apart
from DiCaprio's uncharacteristically overheated acting, this is a film defined
by smart turns (particularly Crowe's sly, Foghorn Leghorn-informed
performance), clear storytelling, atmospheric location shooting, and a pointed
look at Middle East turmoil that contrasts political theory with
caught-in-the-crossfire fact. It's solid filmmaking that, bafflingly, leaves
little to talk about on the way home. Scott keeps both the action scenes and
the human drama at a polite distance and apart from a few moments—Crowe
sardonically delivering orders while driving his kids to school, DiCaprio
picking bone fragments of a dead friend out of his arm—there's little to
take away apart from a vague sense that, as good as it is, it could have been
better. For all the violence inspired by real-life turmoil, the film draws
hardly any blood.